ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the hopes about the future and fears about a rapidly changing society as expressed by the citizens of the Russian empire. The Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) claimed to represent the majority of the empire's peasantry and believed that the best way to stem the tide of industrialization was to assassinate bureaucrats and high-ranking tsarist officials in order to spark a revolution. While the Russian empire was severely divided over politics and modernization, educated society was united around the tsar as he continued to pursue imperial dreams in the Balkans and along the Black Sea coast. Even the newly emerging middle classes, themselves products of modernization, were deeply ambivalent about the transition from a rural society to one of cities and factories. The Bolsheviks' fascination with modernization and industry was also reflected in the contemporary artistic obsession with the shapes, forms and visual representations of the future.
